Miss Stone's second grade scholars researched their favorite plants and animals and used what they learned to create a sculpture. Each scholar presented their sculpture, describing their plant/animal's features and fun facts to their classmates using the classroom projector and document camera. The document camera software was used to record the presentations, and MovieMaker was used to put all of the presentations together to create a class movie project.

Round 1: The interactive qualities of this device allow students to check answers with the touch of a pen... and the answer, Jeopardy style, is: What is a Promethean board?

Mrs. Cruz' fifth grade students are showing what they know about science -- Jeopardy Style! With the use of an overhead projector, PowerPoint, and Promethean ActivInspire tools, the students worked in teams and earned points as they consulted each other about the answers to science questions.

Anderson Mill third graders have been learning how to use Google Drive to share documents . The third graders shown here are collaborating on a spreadsheet. Mrs. Baker created a spreadsheet with a row for each scholar's name and a series of questions in columns for each scholar to answer. The scholars could answer the questions and see in real time how their answers and their classmates answers were appearing as they typed. The document is shared with the classroom teacher and represents the work of all students in the class, contained in one document. The exercise generated discussion on ideas for collaborating in this way on future IB projects. Exciting!

Mrs. Jordan's third grade class produced a video about landforms. The scholars were each given a fact about a type of landform. They then had to decide which landform their fact described and group themselves according to the landform type. Then they decided which fact was the "best topic sentence" and arranged themselves in the "best paragraph" order. The scholars lined up in order and presented and recorded their facts using the classroom document camera and microphone... with a bit of editing and music -- Voila! A movie about landforms!

Mrs. Jackson’s second grade students used an acrostic poem generator to learn about and create their own acrostic poems. The Web 2.0 tool from ReadWriteThink.org provides a brief lesson about acrostic poems, prompts students to brainstorm a list of words or phrases that describe their topic word, then allows them to create an online poem about the topic, making each line begin with a letter from their topic word. You can create your own acrostic poem at http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/acrostic/.

Anderson Mill students were finally able to connect with Rafael Rosado, author/illustrator of the book, "Giants Beware". Mrs. Henson and Mrs. Baker were able to coordinate a "Google Hangout" with Mr. Rosado, following two cancellations of the author's visit due to inclement weather. Thanks to our new Google tools, AME was able to have a videoconference in the cafeteria with the entire school! Mr. Rosado talked to the students about his career as a graphic artist and showed them cartoon characters from many movies and books that he has worked on including SuperMan, Scooby Doo, Curious George, Transformers, and more. The students then drew some of the characters with Mr. Rosado. Because of our new Google tools, we were able to enjoy the visit with Mr. Rosado, almost as if he were physically present.

Mrs. Stillman's and Ms. McAtee's third grade students are "showing what they know" about our solar system. The students worked in groups to conduct research about their chosen planet and presented their findings using the classroom document camera. Each group recorded a segment with the document camera and saved the video to a file on the computer. The video segments were then edited in Movie Maker to produce a movie about the solar system. Check out more class video projects by clicking the "More" tab, then Videos on this webpage.

Anderson Mill teachers are committed to increasing scholar engagement and achievement through technology integration. Mrs. Yang, Mrs. Kaso, Mrs. Zimmern, and Mrs. Watkins are participating in after staff development to learn how to use their document cameras to produce paper slide and other types of videos. They will, in turn, teach their scholars how to produce videos for book reviews, biographies, explaining mathematical concepts, science experiments, and many other "how-to's".

Mrs. Selby's second grade students are creating a "Rockstar Ad" with Glogster to show everyone what they know about rocks and to describe their favorite rock. Glogster is a free Web 2.0 tool that allows students to create interactive posters loaded with text, graphics, music, videos, and more, providing our students with an outlet for unlimited creative expression online.

AME's ITS and Librarian have been working together to help students produce paper slide videos for book reviews. Participating students read a book from the list of Texas Bluebonnet Award books, and produced a video inviting their peers to read the book.

QR codes were made and displayed with the book posters outside of the library to direct students to the location of the videos on the internet. Students, staff, and school visitors can scan the QR codes and watch the book review videos from their own devices. Check out the Book Reviews page to see more!

Donna Baker

Donna Baker is the Instructional Technology Specialist (ITS) for Jollyville Elementary and Anderson Mill Elementary. She has more than 10 years experience as an ITS and technology teacher. She is passionate about helping students and teachers meet their educational goals through the integration of technology in the classroom.